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Photoshop Tips for Photographs!

Aside from cropping, I have no idea how to manipulate images. Datura mentioned flattening out a horizon and I wouldn't have the first clue how to do that aside from rotating the image. Give me some good and easy photo editing tips please!

I'd recommend taking a look at Scott Kelby's Seven Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS 3. I'm trying to learn this stuff myself, always asking how I can make an image look better, and this book helps with that. While some of the stuff is specific to CS 3, you can still take some of the ideas and incorporate them into CS 2. I'm currently using CS 2 but am looking at upgrading.

Of course, there are also plenty of Photoshop tip tutorials out there that can be found via a Google search.

To level out a horizon, select the ruler tool (found in the same menu as the eyedropper) and draw a line along the horizon. Now go to Image>Rotate Canvas>Abitrary. You should click ok and now see your horizon leveled out.

Hope that helps Sara. I can't think of any other tips right now, cause I'm only a photoshop beginner myself, and mostly using it for graphic design anyway.

if the colours or contrast etc. in your photos(straight out of camera) don't look good, you can adjust the contrast etc. on your computer in a image editing software(Photoshop or PhotoPaint or Gimp or Paint.NET), try sharpening a bit. usually tweaking contrast(& sharpening in some photos) a bit makes a photo look much better than than what came out of camera.

however, remember this one thing - post processing(in an image editing software) is only to make good photos look better, its not for making bad photos look good!! so try to get the best photo from the camera itself, as best as you can & don't rely or think about post processing when clicking. post processing is just for tweaking the photos a little bit.

Thanks for the tips so far. Is there a way to make the colors stand out brighter? A lot of my photos are hazy.. is there anyway to remove that haze using photoshop?

I'm not sure but you can try a bit sharpening in that case & then play around with lightness, colour balance & hue-saturation. also, when shooting in hazy conditions, always have a haze filter on your lens(if thats possible).

You can use another method to brighten/sharpen up an image, I picked this tip up from a photoshop magazine which I sometimes buy on a whim.

Take a photograph and create a layer from background, duplicate the layer, and set the blending mode to overlay. This has one effect on the image, but you can go further and use the high pass filter (found in the 'other' menu on the filters list)
As an example of what it looks like:
Original Image:
After processing using the above (twiddle with the settings on the filter to find what looks best for your image)
And just using the photoshop 'sharpen' filter -closer inspection will reveal it's slightly more grainy

It may well do that it's true asp_funda, however I feel that to get the best results playing with the colouring options takes a bit of know-how and experience - which isn't necessarily a barrier to anyone trying them out anyway, but I offered this as one other idea to try

Interestingly, the file size of the pictures I posted 1)original 293, 2)tip 336, 3) photoshop-filter 350. Makes perfect sense to me
You might consider posting an example yourself, so we can see how you optimise images and their relative file sizes

it usually depends on colour & the types of adjustments done & on the photo as well(as to how much colour data it has) and also the quality at which you save the photo. like in case of this photo:

this is 4.79MB, the original that I got from the camera is 3.7MB. in this photo, besides using the unsharp mask, I played a bit with saturation & quite a bit of contrast(using curves layer mask) & then saved it at 11quality setting. if I'd saved it at 10 then it might've resulted in a lower file size.

1. Correction:
- straightening (as described above - or you can use the crop tool if you also need to pick out a better selection of the shot and rotate your selection before confirming the crop)
- composition - using the rule of thirds (Wikipedia has a good example on this) I try to ensure the subject is "composed" or positioned well with regards to the frame, the subject and other objects in the shot

2. Enhancement:
- Normally starting with UnSharp Mask (USM) rather than normal sharpening - it gives better results and is used by most photographers. Most cameras have their settings deliberately set to a softer setting (to flatter people shots).
- Curves/Levels - both seem to do the same thing but are slightly different (Googling will give you more info), but to ensure your blacks are black and whites are white you will normally need to adjust your curves (most photos respond well to a slight 'S'-curve, while with levels you can level out your histogram

There are plenty of good articles out there which show you a variety of methods to achieve good results. When I started my photoblog I always got comments on how I did that, so now I outline the basic post-processing steps with each image.

using the rule of thirds (Wikipedia has a good example on this) I try to ensure the subject is "composed" or positioned well with regards to the frame, the subject and other objects in the shot

sometimes its better to break the rule as well.

Originally Posted by seriocomic

Most cameras have their settings deliberately set to a softer setting (to flatter people shots).

a number of cameras also have different levels of sharpening & contrast etc. which the user can set. for my FZ50 I've found that its better to keep the sharpening & contrast to as low & then I enhance it on computer by which I get better results!!

To level out a horizon, select the ruler tool (found in the same menu as the eyedropper) and draw a line along the horizon. Now go to Image>Rotate Canvas>Abitrary. You should click ok and now see your horizon leveled out.

Hope that helps Sara. I can't think of any other tips right now, cause I'm only a photoshop beginner myself, and mostly using it for graphic design anyway.

That is not how I do it Andy. I work with a wide angle lens, the horizon becomes a bowl, both sides of it go up, an indentation in the middle. I sometimes use the distort tool, if the general direction is tilted, but then I go in and select a rectangle with a straight line (horizon) with the marquee tool and select the sky part let's say.

With the stamp tool I copy along the line of the selection to even out the sky. If there is something in the foreground I use the stamp tool, the pencil or brush to paint in the right things to make it look natural.

You have to look at what the natural coloration is and than imitate it, you can not just cut it and butt the other part against it, it would look very unnatural. It becomes a simulated area in the photograph, but should look as if nothing was done to it.

All the pictures with a horizon I have posted in the Sky Thread have been worked over like that.